Blood Debt

he had one just like it, which he was going to get rid of the moment he got home. Celluci'd never noticed before how much alike they looked.
    It wasn't the clothes. Thousands of vampire wannabes all over the world dressed with more undead style than these two.
    It wasn't their coloring. Although both were fair, Fitzroy's hair had more red in it and Vicki was a definite ash blonde. It said so on the box.
    It was just, merely, simply, purely the way they were. They shared a belle morte —a deadly beauty. Celluci wasn't sure why the words came to him first in Italian; he was family-fluent only, and it wasn't a language he'd ever thought in, but somehow English— plain old workaday English—didn't seem sufficient.
    And not only a deadly beauty; they also shared a complete and utter certainty in themselves and their place in the world.
    Certainty, Vicki had never been short of, but her sheer, bloody-minded belief that she was as right as anyone had been refined during the moment she locked eyes with Henry Fitzroy; refined and sharpened to a razor's edge. Fitzroy, of course, had always had it. It was one of the things Celluci'd always hated. Always responded to.
    His heart began to beat in time to the power that throbbed between them. That surrounded them. That surrounded him. In that hallway, at that instant, watching the two of them watch each other, he understood the declaration, I am.
    And that is quite enough of that! Italian description arriving out the blue he could cope with, but blasphemy was something else again!
    Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned; it's been two years since my last confession, but that's only because I've been sleeping with a vampire. Yeah. Right.
    As a musical chime shattered the silence, he lifted his right foot, put it down, and almost miraculously followed the movement with his left—walking directly through their line of sight. "I hate to break up a Kodak moment, kids, but the elevator's here."
    For a heartbeat the power gained a new focus. He could feel it flaying his back, simultaneously hot and cold, and he had a brief vision of Vicki's pale fingers shredding that chair. A little amazed he was still able to move, he stepped over the threshold into the elevator and turned around. As expected, they were both staring at him. Vicki's mouth twisted up in a half smile; her sense of the ridiculous overwhelming the melodrama. Fitzroy had on his Prince of Darkness face. Celluci squared his shoulders, resisting the pull. No one survived a relationship with Vicki Nelson— alive or undead—without an equally strong sense of self and he was not going to bend the knee to Henry Fucking Fitzroy. "You coming, Vicki?"

    When she nodded and stepped toward the elevator, he stepped back to give her room.
    She paused, just inside, and her smile sharpened. "Coming, Henry?
    "
    Even Celluci could hear the challenge. Hell, a deaf man in the next building could've heard the challenge. "Vicki…"
    One pale hand rose. A prince indicating there was no need for the masses to get involved. "I don't think so. No."
    "Why not? Afraid of losing your vaunted control? Too old to cope?"
    "Vicki!" He might as well have saved his breath. The words were thrown back with all the finesse of a schoolyard taunt and were just as impossible to ignore.
    His back against the wall, with Vicki between him and the exit, Celluci watched Henry advance toward the elevator. He wanted to grab her and shake her and demand to know what the hell she thought she was doing. Except he knew. Trust Vicki to drive her point home with a god-damned sledgehammer. I should've taken the fucking stairs…
    When the doors closed, the fabric of Henry's blazer whispered against it. "Parking level one, please."
    Head tilted slightly down, silvered eyes locked with shadow, Vicki pressed the button without looking at the panel.
    It wasn't the elevator that lurched into motion, Celluci realized; it was his heart.
    They shifted position simultaneously, too fast for a mere mortal to see them move. One moment they stood facing each other—Henry's back against the doors—the next Vicki stood to Celluci's left and Henry to his right. They continued to face each other but had gained what might be a survivable distance between them. A low, warning growl, felt not heard, vibrated through the enclosed space and lifted every hair on Celluci's body—not a pleasant sensation. Realizing how little it would take to tip the balance into bloody chaos, he resisted the